AJ Brown has many strings to his bow: a confident wide receiver, background singer And would be a professional baseball player. On Sunday, he added another facet: the NFL’s most dedicated reader.
The Eagles wide receiver was caught by TV cameras casually flipping through a book on the sideline during his team’s playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers.
Brown, who was named to the NFL’s All-Pro team for the third team this season, had just one catch on Sunday but denied that he started reading because he had opted out of the game.
“I wasn’t frustrated at all. I thought that’s probably what y’all were thinking,” Brown said after the game. ‘Why do you always think I’m frustrated? Dang. I like to read.”
The book in question was Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy, which promises to “train your mind for extraordinary performance and the best possible life.” Brown isn’t the only athlete who is a fan: the book’s Amazon page also features endorsements from Olympic golf champion Nelly Korda and PGA Championship winner Jason Duffner.
Brown later added on social media that he brings the book to every game and that reading helps his performance. “I use it to refocus and hold on no matter what might happen in the game, good or bad,” he wrote. “People tend to create controversy when they don’t know the truth.”
Brown said he suffered an injury during the game while his quarterback, Jalen Hurts, was returning from a stint on the sidelines after a concussion.
‘I’ve never seen him read [on the sideline]; I saw the book in his hands,” Hurts said. “Everyone has something different and finds their flow in different ways. That’s how he chooses to do it.”
Inner Excellence’s free advertisement on US network television did not appear to have immediately boosted sales. As of Sunday evening, it was number 573,835 on Amazon’s book sales charts.